The so-called lockdown is a rumor, there is no reason to buy more groceries than usual. The population should remain calm. Attempts by Beijing authorities to placate people triggered the exact opposite this week. In many parts of the city, people stormed the supermarkets again.
The city of millions has been fighting a corona wave since the end of April. Officially there is no hard lockdown, staying at home is still just a recommendation. But for almost three weeks now, public life in large parts of the city has been reduced to a minimum. Restaurants can only offer a delivery service or have the food picked up, and local public transport has been suspended in some areas. People are working from home, schools are closed. In numerous districts, residents are asked to be tested every day.
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The nervousness in Beijing is representative of the situation in dozens of cities and regions in the country that have been fighting new corona waves for weeks. Because the latest corona variant BA.2 is far more contagious than its predecessors, the authorities are no longer able to stop the virus from spreading.
Grinding permanent lockdowns
The number zero, which China’s head of state and party leader has continued to state as the top priority in the fight against the virus, has become a long way off. The result is grueling permanent lockdowns with no clear end in sight. More than ever, the huge costs of the restrictions are becoming apparent: companies are reporting production stops and problems with supply chains. Growth is threatening to collapse, and small businesses in particular can hardly cope with the permanent closures.
There are good reasons why the government is sticking to its course, as a study by Fudan University in Shanghai recently showed. According to the researchers, the country is at risk of a “tsunami” of infections if the authorities relax their strict measures too quickly. The problem is that although more than 90 percent of people have received two doses of the vaccine, many older people are not vaccinated. Added to this is the ability of the virus to evade immunity to existing vaccinations.
Without the mass tests and strict lockdowns, there would be an omicron spread with around 112 million symptomatic cases and 5 million hospital admissions within a few weeks, and the need for intensive care beds is likely to be almost 16 times higher than capacity. A total of up to 1.6 million deaths would have to be expected, three quarters of them unvaccinated people aged 60 and over.
Infected children separated from their parents
The best chance Beijing has now seems to be playing for time. The elderly must be vaccinated as quickly as possible, and in the long term better vaccines and effective medication should also help. Despite the massive costs, many Chinese remain convinced that there is no alternative to the zero-Covid strategy for the time being. What people are increasingly questioning is the proportionality of the measures.
The main focus of this debate is the management of the authorities in Shanghai, where some residents have been locked in their homes for almost two months. The lockdown of the city came so suddenly that a large proportion of the people had no access to sufficient food or medical care for a long time. Helpers beat pets to death when their owners were in quarantine and separated infected children from their parents in the name of the fight against corona. Even if there were not enough staff in the isolation wards to care for the children.
It is also questionable for many people that infected people were initially taken to central quarantine stations, even if they had already tested negative again at the time of collection. On Wednesday, an official from the Shanghai health authorities was forced to defend the strict measures. These are in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations.
WHO criticizes Beijing’s tough corona course
The rigorous measures are now also an issue in the World Health Organization. WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus, who praised Beijing’s tough corona course at the beginning of the crisis, described the measures this week as unsustainable “given the properties of the virus”. The censors immediately deleted any mention of the criticism on social media, only the Foreign Ministry issued an angry statement. It was hoped that “the person concerned” would look at China’s Covid policy objectively and rationally and know the facts, rather than making irresponsible remarks.
As is often the case when China’s leaders feel pressured, the state media went into attack mode. In caricatures, they took up the tragic milestone of one million corona deaths in the USA. One drawing showed Uncle Sam throwing away his mask while talking about “human rights”. Next to it a cemetery with the subtitle: no people left.
Another showed a large faucet of money. On the one hand, only a few banknotes flow out of the pipe as corona aid. On the other hand, a hand holds a bulging bucket. The money inside, according to the cartoonist – for American armaments to fuel the war in Ukraine.